Neuro-inclusion as a short-cut to inclusion across dimensions
In this article, I will conclude that designing and establishing a culture that is inspired by neuro-inclusion creates a work environment that is inclusive and equal across all dimensions of diversity: ability, age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality. I will consider how an organization can become a true cognitive mix, welcoming, nurturing, and appealing equally to neurodivergent and neurotypical talent by virtue of how its culture is designed. A culture that focuses on enabling people with different strengths to combine their gifts in a way that results in an outcome that is greater than the sum of the parts will improve the working environment for everyone, regardless of which diversity dimension(s) they identify with.
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Short of time? Here are the three key take-aways before we get back to the full version.
1. A neuro-inclusive culture is designed to be a true cognitive mix. It welcomes, enables, and appeals equally to neurodivergent and neurotypical talent. It places equal value on focused analytical, logical inputs; on blue-sky ideation and experimentation; and on the ability to execute a project to completion. Differences in the way that information is taken in, used, and communicated, are not only accepted, but celebrated and sought after.
2. Every employee of a neuro-inclusive culture shares accountability to find ways that allow each other to shine and contribute their best. Conscious, active neuro-inclusion pervades the organization, which has taken a step beyond merely accepting cognitive diversity. The focus is on skills and outcomes, and not on trying to conform to a standard.
3. Designing and building a culture inspired by neuro-inclusion improves the inclusivity of the working environment for everyone, regardless of which diversity dimension(s) they identify with. Focusing on the benefits of the mix of cognitive styles, strengths, and preferred ways of working rather than the reasons for these differences reduces the need to claim age, cognitive style, disability, ethnic background, gender or sexuality to secure accommodations, and brings a more equal focus for everyone. Neuro-inclusion offers a short-cut to greater cross-dimensional inclusion.
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The foundation of a neuro-inclusive working culture is that it is a true cognitive mix where differences in the way that information is taken in, used, and communicated, are not only accepted but celebrated and sought after. It is a culture that is just as fair to neurodivergent employees, such as autists, ADHDers dyslexics, and dyspraxics, as it is to neurotypical employees. Everyone has an equal chance to develop in an environment where they feel valued and can contribute meaningfully to the collective success of the organization.
How do you get started with creating this working environment? I will answer by sharing an anecdote about a leadership team that I was part of and a transformation that we engineered, but before I do, I want to emphasize that the goal of that transformation was to work together more effectively as a team. It was not to become neuro-inclusive per se. Nevertheless, what we created was an essential component of a neuro-inclusive culture, and the story will illustrate one of the things that I find most exciting about neuro-inclusion: it benefits everyone in an organization, whatever their ability, age, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, not only the 30% who are neurodivergent.
And now to the promised anecdote. Ours was a team in name-only. It felt as though we were a group of individuals who were forced to try to fit together, and that there was a right way of doing things that I couldn’t quite work out. We were all busy with our own projects, and we were good at pointing out perceived flaws in how each other worked which led to a vicious cycle of increasing protectiveness and confrontation. My role was to design, plan and lead organization-wide people-change initiatives, and I felt as though I was constantly chasing and nagging other leadership team members without much hope of response. On the other hand, my colleagues seemed to me to burn time in endless discussion, and on the rare occasion that we agreed an action it was not adhered to. It was an energy drain, it was not fun, and I don’t think that anyone was really engaged or contributing their best work.
Then came the change. A brave leader stopped us from trying to mold ourselves into the elusive standard team member, and instead invested in us as a collective which could learn to retain our diversities, to value them and combine them so that we could achieve outcomes together. They brought in neutral external expertise to reset our team: we spent moderated time building understanding of each other’s strengths, styles, and sources of frustration. No one needed to say whether they were neurodivergent or neurotypical, or for that matter anything about their age, ethnic background or sexuality, because it didn’t matter: we focused on the consequences for our team of our cognitive styles, our strengths, and our preferred way of working, not the source of them. It was an eye-opener for me to learn that the endless discussions were fun for my teammates, and equally for them to learn how maddening their ideation could become for me. I learnt and experienced that my colleagues’ skills made our projects more ambitious, resilient, and impactful, and we also saw that skills like mine were essential to bring the team’s ideas to fruition. Everything fell into place. We could only be a successful leadership team by accepting what made us who we were and discovering how to work together while staying true to ourselves.
We discovered how to function as a team over the coming months, constantly testing and iterating ways to give each other time to discuss or plan, while (mostly) avoiding entering frustrating territory. We made our ‘team norms’ explicit by writing them down and revisiting them in each meeting, and we made them live by evaluating and adjusting them regularly. We learned to value and call on each other’s skills, and to enjoy our quirks. Sometimes we asked a team member what they were doing, but from a place of curiosity rather than criticism; we assumed best intent. Every achievement was celebrated together because we’d each contributed something and were all invested in the outcomes. We had mixed the best of ourselves together instead of trying to fit ourselves to a standard. The team became a source of energy and being a part of creating it remains one of my proudest achievements.
Perhaps the most rewarding outcome originated from sharing the journey and revitalized team dynamics with the rest of the organization, which had been modelling a lot of our earlier negative behavior. We were able to cascade our learnings to the teams reporting to us and everyone became more open to mixing differences rather than seeking conformity. The profound impact of these changes was clear when we then asked our organization to take a leap of faith to achieve something very frightening and challenging (a story for another day): they trusted, they contributed, and we succeeded together beyond all expectations. In short, we had transformed the culture of our leadership team and organization from “No, but” to “Yes, and.”
The second key component of a neuro-inclusive culture is a collective shift in mindset to share accountability for unlocking the full value from each team member, neurodivergent or neurotypical. The focus needs to move from process to skills and outcomes. It’s not a task reserved for leadership alone; it’s a collective responsibility that pervades every level of the organization.
Neuro-inclusivity can only truly exist when every individual strives to create and sustain an open, trusting and accepting working environment, that places equal value on logical structural input, free-flowing ideation, and the ability to focus and execute agreed actions. These are the diverse skills we will find in every neuro-inclusive team, but that team needs to move beyond merely acknowledging this diversity to being actively neuro-inclusive. Being consciously inclusive means owning what we can each do to empower all team members to contribute their best.
As well as being a critical enabler of neuro-inclusivity, shared accountability ensures that the changes are implemented in ways that are relevant to the various teams within the organization. One size does not fit all. The way in which one team achieves the state of belonging, connection and delivering outstanding value is different to the way in which another team accomplishes it, because of the diversity of team members, as well as to the team’s priorities and goals. The only way to achieve this at scale is to hold individuals jointly accountable, while supporting and empowering them to feel confident in exploring the different ways they can achieve this.
A major bonus of focusing on skills and outcomes, rather than the way in which those skills are employed to reach outcomes, is that it drives inclusion across all dimensions. Consider gender-equality as an example: focusing on how a skillset can best be enabled to shine within the context of the team gives people of all gender identities an equal chance to contribute.
The final element of a neuro-inclusive culture is that it is sustainable. Neuro-inclusion isn’t static; it’s a dynamic ecosystem that needs to evolve in response to change.
Organizations inevitably and constantly experience the forces of change. They may be internal from changes in team composition, or a result of new strategic priorities. They may be externally driven by new customer needs, or changes in the competitive environment. A global disruptor may come along like generative AI. A neuro-inclusive culture contains and empowers such diversity of skills, that reinforce each other, that it is highly resilient. Neuro-inclusion is a bet on long-term success if it is set up in a way that ensures it evolves when necessary.
A formal framework of process and policy will sustain this neuro-empowered resilience. Hard-wiring neuro-inclusive goals into processes and policies ensures that they remain top-of-mind once the neuro-inclusion strategic initiative has been concluded and moves to maintenance mode. Refocusing the hiring process on revealing relevant skills; ensuring that the rewards process recognizes the same skills and experience with consistent pay; and explicitly including cognitive differences in policies such as anti-discrimination, means that neuro-inclusion is not inadvertently forgotten when processes and policies are adjusted to keep pace with the organization’s shifting environment. Every employee is jointly accountable for building and sustaining neuro-inclusivity in their teams, and coding this expectation into process and policy means that space must always be created for employees to have the freedom to evolve and innovate how the neuro-inclusive culture manifests, so that it remains relevant.
To conclude, I have described three core features of a neuro-inclusive culture that can easily be made relevant to any change initiative. A neuro-inclusion transformation program stands out because of its goal to embrace the mix of neurodivergence with neurotypicality as a strength rather than a hindrance, by refocusing on how people can be allowed to shine because of their strengths rather than the minutiae of how they work. It also stands out because this organization-wide focus on skills and outcomes is a short-cut to equality because it automatically improves inclusion across all dimensions of diversity.
